


It's All in Your Head

by emrys (livingshitpost)



Series: soft wwii boyfriends [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Anger, Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst with a Happy Ending, Background Relationships, Black Panther (2018) Post-Credits Scene, Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Has Issues, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Bucky Barnes-centric, But it's very light, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Captain America: The Winter Soldier Compliant, Emotions, Fear, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Gender Confusion, Gender-Neutral Pronouns, Happy, Identity Issues, Implied Relationships, Light Angst, M/M, Male Pronouns, Military Background, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Nonbinary Bucky Barnes, Post-Black Panther (2018), Prompt Fill, Recovered Memories, Recovery, Well - Freeform, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes, Writing Exercise, implied gore, it/its pronouns, multiple pronouns for one person, no actual gore, pronoun confusion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-02
Updated: 2019-01-02
Packaged: 2019-10-01 23:46:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17253641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/livingshitpost/pseuds/emrys
Summary: Exercise: Write three short paragraphs, the first "fear," the second "anger," and the last "pleasure" without using these words.





	1. Festering

**Author's Note:**

> Exercise: Write three short paragraphs, the first "fear," the second "anger," and the last "pleasure" without using these words. Try to render these emotions by describing physical sensations or images. If you want, write mini-stories, dramatizing these emotions. Try to make your language precise and fresh.  
> (spoiler: i wanna write mini-stories)

It starts out simply. It's uncertain. There's a lump in its throat. Its tongue is thick in its mouth as it speaks.

"Who the hell is Bucky?"

It tries to leave the man on the bridge behind, but its stomach turns over in its gut. Its hands don't shake. They never do. But it feels like they might.

It starts to remember, and that only makes it worse. It gets put back in the chair; it always does. It's excruciating in the chair, but it fights the instinct to struggle. This time it isn't from the threat of additional pain.

Its gut churns and writhes within it. It thinks it might be sick, but that can't be possible. They made sure it would never get sick. It can't be sick. But it feels so sick. It doesn't know what's happening to it, and that makes it feel sicker.

It  _is_ sick, it concludes, but not in the body. It's sick in the mind. (Tell it something it doesn't know.)

And knowing that only makes the sickness worse.


	2. Gangrenous

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [young griffin mcelroy voice] **_A N G E R_**

It wants things now.

It isn't used to that.

It wants things to _stop_ now.

It thinks that feels familiar.

It doesn't want to go back to that chair. Not now, not when this is over, not ever.

So it doesn't.

 ~~It~~  

He takes a backpack and a few notebooks. He takes clothes and hats and gloves. He takes food, too, but then he takes money. He wants to stop taking things, but he doesn't know how to hold a job. He doesn't even know how to  _find_ a job. The only job it ever had was killing, and he doesn't want to do that anymore.

He leaves his bigger guns in the woods, bullets scattered individually by riverbeds and streams. He doesn't want them. He hopes to God he doesn't need them.

But he does, so he's glad he kept the smaller ones.

He doesn't know how they find him, but they do, and he has no choice but to kill them. He feels sick to his stomach when he does. It never felt like that before, but he does now. He is sick in the mind and he is only getting sicker. 

It wants to stop being sick.

 _He_ wants to stop being sick.

He does his best, he really does. He visits memorials and museums and he remembers things on his own, but it's not enough. The instinct is still there.

The Words don't work unless spoken in Russian, but they make him tense and reach for the knife in his boot whenever he hears one of them. It doesn't help that he knows so many ways they can be said.

"-Sehnsucht-"

"Khamri allawn-"

"-aoyvn-"

"-recreo de día-"

"-dix-sept."

Hearing them make his skin crawl. His eyes alight with fire and he knows that he will die before being made their lapdog again, but he will die fighting. Everything is black and white and red and there are hands all over him and he's silent, sure, but it's screaming murder and spitting blood and battling for every tiny, normal thing he's worked so hard to get. People are yelling at it — yelling at  _him_  — but it doesn't listen.

It's not until he's thrown someone carelessly to the floor that it stops, and now people are screaming for help.  _Call 911_ , they cry, and the blues and yellows return, but mostly everything is still red.

 _Fuck_. 

Perhaps it's just a lost cause.

(That only makes him feel sicker.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the languages the activation words are spoken in are german, arabic, yiddish, spanish, and french :0c


	3. Amputation

_"Don't do anything stupid while I'm gone," he'd told him._

_"How can I?" He'd smiled. "You're taking all the stupid with you."_

He smiles at the memory.

"Good morning, Seargent Barnes."

His smile falls and he groans. "I thought I was goin' back under?"

"You did. And now you're up again."

"Why?"

"Because it's time to start working on getting Hydra out of that head of yours."

He sighs and blearily opens his eyes. He's . . . He doesn't know where he is. But when he sits up and looks around, there's a photo of him on the nightstand. He picks it up and examines it closely.

Steve is smiling up at him.

His shoulders fall slightly. His lips curl upwards.

"And I'll be . . . safe? To be around?

Shuri nods.

He almost laughs. It's been so long since anything's been safe; he doesn't know what to say.

"That punk better not have gotten himself killed since I went back under."

Shuri smacks him with a laugh. "Don't be a jerk, James."


End file.
